✔ Amazon PPC Strategies With Liran Hirschkorn

Amazon PPC strategies is very vital to  Amazon’s internal advertising system. Here you will have more knowledge about it and some tips and advise that you can use in your Amazon Journey.

Tomer David OK, guys, so we have Liran, Liran Hirschkorn, he’s someone that I met, I think, two years ago in New York meet up, Brendon meetups in New York City.

So if you live there, definitely you should after this old thing ends attend, he’s someone that I really, really respect as far as what is sharing, what is giving back to the community, and in general, like this person is like working nonstop.

I always tell you, like when you have time to sleep? So he is really like a hard-working person and very smart and it’s a pleasure to have you here on the channel.

So why?.. He is a PPC expert and he has an agency. So why wouldn’t you just tell me about yourself? Who you are?

Liran Hirschkorn [00:00:50] Sure. Yeah. And yeah, and we got a chance to also hang out right before the whole world shut down this past February.

Tomer David [00:00:57] Yeah. In Vegas.

Liran Hirschkorn [00:00:59] In Vegas, which was, which was cool. So I’ve been in the Amazon space since two thousand and fourteen.

I started by, I started by getting into arbitrage and going to stores and you know, going to the Nike Clearing Store in Queens, New York.

And I would spend five thousand dollars, buy a bunch of shoes and send them into Amazon and that’s how I got started but it was actually a great way to get started because I had to learn about bestseller ranking, buy a box, and what’s selling? What’s not selling? And all these like aspects.

So It was a great lesson and learning before getting into private label and where a lot of sellers started a private label and don’t have that previous experience of getting their feet wet with Amazon and it’s very valuable.

So I started that way and then I basically learned and learned and then started my own brands. And fast forward to today. I run Incrementum Digital, which is an agency, an Amazon Marketing and Advertising agency.

We’re helping sellers and brands manage their advertising, grow their sales with DSP and Amazon ads, and also fully, fully managing brands’ entire marketing on Amazon.

So it’s a super exciting space to be in right now. A lot of obviously growth happening.

Tomer David [00:02:23] Would you share some numbers like how much Ad spend you manage guys a month like?

Liran Hirschkorn [00:02:28] Yeah. So we’re pacing at about twenty million dollars a year, around two million dollars a month in terms of like monthly ad spend, in terms of what we’re managing, I expect next year we’ll maybe get to somewhere around 40 million dollars a year because it’s growing like month over month.

You know, in terms of like, what the ad spend is so, super exciting. We manage over one hundred and sixty, you know, Amazon stores in terms of their ad spend and also.. also working within DSP.

So, we get a lot of kind of this unique insight into what’s happening with the advertising because we get a little bit of a bigger picture view.

Tomer David [00:03:15] Yeah, so definitely with that ad spend I’m sure you can. You’re an expert. I know what you’re sharing.

You guys, if you want to check the things, like Liran, have a great Facebook group called eCommerce Mind his sharing their nonstop things and also all the people there are really, really supporting each other and it’s a great community.

I’m also in like replying there and trying to ask questions when I have so definitely joined that group. And I did have some questions.

Starting with the first one, which is a topic that is super relevant to where we are right now. It’s how you manage PPC these days during Q4.

Is there like anything you guys in your agency do different than normal times or approaching?

Liran Hirschkorn [00:04:03] Yeah, I mean, there’s some things we do differently. I mean, the first thing is obviously, you know, there’s a number of things that happen now that don’t happen during the rest of the year.

One, this is a time of year where, like, traffic keeps going up and up and up as you get closer to Christmas. And what will happen also is starting like December 15, there will be even greater and greater sales on Amazon, specifically because that’s a time where I think FedEx and USPS can’t guarantee any more shipments.

So that means a lot of e-commerce stores, a lot of like Shopify stores and a lot of e-commerce stores will not be able to kind of deliver on like Christmas delivery, especially this year.

Everybody is getting slammed. So if Amazon can still deliver on that, then there will be even more and more people going to Amazon to buy like last minute.

So, number one managing the budgets and watching your budgets, like, you know, all the time is really, really important. The other thing..so that’s number one.

So obviously we’re increasing budgets where it makes sense and we’re also generally getting better conversions. So if your conversion rate was 15 percent a month ago, today might be twenty five or thirty percent, like your conversion rate might be a lot better than what it is now.

So you can utilize that for two things depending on your strategy. You can utilize that to say, hey, I’m going to raise my bids, I had a 30 percent ACOS last month.

I’m OK with 30 now. I’m going to raise my bids, get more aggressive, drive more sales, or I’m going to keep my bids the same and I’m just going to have a better ACOS now.

And for a lot of our clients, that’s kind of what we’re doing because we’re seeing the ACOS improve and that’s what we’re doing, because everybody is having inventory issues also.

The amount of stock they can send in to Amazon, the amount of stock they have on hand, they’re getting more sales than they expected. So we’re not really pushing people to say, hey, let’s raise your bids and let’s maybe keep the same ACOS.

We rather just make it more profitable right now, get better conversions, increase bids. Some other things that we’re doing is we are creating more, let’s say, sponsored brand headline ads that maybe have maybe the copy is a little bit different. So the copy is targeting words like..

Tomer David [00:06:21] Q4 oriented.

[00:06:22] Yeah, Q4 oriented copy. We do test things like gift keywords, but I’m not as excited about gift keywords .

We’ll generally test them in small campaigns, in separate campaigns but I’m not as excited about it because gift keywords actually don’t convert as well as more targeted keywords.

I actually just saw some data that last year gift-related keywords produced an ACOS of two to three times higher than just category related.

Tomer David [00:06:50] Everyone are going after these keywords isn’t that right?

Liran Hirschkorn [00:06:52] Because everyone’s are going are going after them and also because if I’m looking to buy a gift for somebody and I search gift for eight year old boy, then it’s very broad about what my options are.

So I’m much more likely to just click and not buy and convert versus I’m looking for a puzzle for an eight year old boy right? I’m much more likely to convert on something.

So and it also really depends on your price points. We have clients that have price points across the board and like we have a customer that sells massage guns, right?

OK, that’s a good target for gifts for athletes. But I don’t know if that person is thinking I’m spending twenty five dollars on a gift and buying a fitness band, or if they’re looking to spend one hundred fifty dollars and buy a massage gun.

So you don’t really know what the buyer intent is and so you kind of want to think about that.

So I would say, you know, if you’re going to test that, test it in a separate campaign, but otherwise, as far as managing, it really is more about the fundamentals of managing bids, managing keywords, managing negatives.

I would also say that now, I’m more focused on telling my team to really start doing more with retargeting ads, sponsored display retargeting, because now it’s a time that people are browsing their shopping.

They’re more active on the site and so showing them, showing them an ad when they’re kind of maybe thinking about what to buy for somebody makes more sense. So we are testing more on like sponsored display retargeting.

Tomer David [00:08:19] That’s pretty much what I’m doing as well. I see like, you know, what I’m doing during the day is just checking the campaigns.

Once I see campaigns out of budget and there are still with good like ACOS, I will raise it. Just like being on top of like all the campaigns and the fundamentals, just like the frequency is higher, I would say.

That’s what I do. So, yeah, that’s great. And you talked about the limitations and the next question is related to that.

So how we should approach PPC like with these like stock limitations, we don’t have enough stock. So you will probably be out of stock at a certain point, especially my products and I hear from many, many people.

What is your day guys like? Do you pause campaigns? Do you reduce budget? Do you increase prices? I’m like not as aggressive as I would want to be if I had enough stock, because I know that I will be out of stock, just impossible to get stock to Amazon.

More tips on Amazon PPC strategies

Liran Hirschkorn [00:09:16]  So so I would say focus on profitability and on margin and just I mean, I think Q4 is not only the best time of year for sales, it’s the best time of year for profits right?

Because you can have one hundred thousand a month in August and you can have one hundred thousand a month in November and your price should be higher, your ACOS should be better, your conversion should be better right?

Like you should be making more profit now. So yeah, so in this case what we’re doing is either we are not raising the budgets and we’re letting the campaigns go out of budget and it’s fine.

And we are going after a lower target ACOS, right? So whereas before somebody said maybe or they’re ACOS maybe was thirty-five or thirty percent, now we’re saying, hey, let’s bring it down to twenty.

So we’re reducing the bids essentially and again because we’re converting better able to bring down the ACOS, we’ll try to focus on just making, making it more profitable and maybe pull back on budgets if people are having inventory issues.

You know, my advice is just to make your Q4 the most profitable it could be, raise your price, lower your target ACOS, don’t raise your budgets, maybe pull back on your budgets, you know, yeah.

Especially if you’re having issues with a lot of people who are having inventory issues. I got off a call today with one of my clients who had a lightning deal the other day and couldn’t.

He said one of his SKUS within ten minutes of the lightning deal sold out and another SKU, he said, you know, if he didn’t have the inventory limit, he would have been able to and be able, he couldn’t, he was out of stock and has to send more and he would have sold another five hundred thousand units on his lightning deal.

So that definitely, you know, definitely to me, that says just like focus on making as much profit as possible.

Tomer David [00:11:02] Yeah. Some of the products actually increased prices. And, you know, obviously, I’m like keeping an eye on it.

So I don’t want the conversion rate to go down and then I lose some rankings. So if you change pricing, do it carefully with monitoring and it’s actually like I’m selling more.

You know, it happened to me last year. It happens this year as well and it’s frustrating but, you know, no complaints. It’s the best thing that we are having.

Yesterday, I think you posted and shared that Black Friday and Cyber Monday were like forty percent higher than last year for Amazon so it’s all-time record, which is like it would you know, we saw that. But, you know, it’s crazy, right?

Liran Hirschkorn [00:11:42] Right. Because foot traffic, the stores, Black Friday was down fifty percent of what it is. A lot of stores weren’t open on Thanksgiving.

They’re usually open and there’s more people ordering or ordering online. So, yeah. So, I mean, everybody’s experiencing these issues and even Amazon itself has growing pains that they themselves can not handle it.

We’re using one of the brands that we’re managing in, and I’m a partner in. We’re using Deliverr and I’ve heard so many horror stories about Deliverr and now I see our shipments are late, our merchant fulfilled shipments are late in Seller Central.

So I just want it to then, increase the handling time to make it even longer. I had the handling time as three days. Now, I made it five days right? So we don’t continue to have issues on merchant fulfill order.

So these are things that, you know, even Deliverr, which is a major, huge company can’t handle the growth. So everybody in every single area of e-commerce, especially logistics right now, is busier than they’ve ever been before.

Which means to say if you’re going to run out of stock anyway, you know, if I’m going to run out of stock, whether it’s December 15th or December twenty fifth, then I’m going to be out of stock for a month to begin with, I don’t really care if it’s going to hurt my conversion and I’m at the end of day, I just want to maximize profits.

Tomer David [00:13:07] Good. Good point. Yeah, I also got the other day, like e-mail from [00:13:10]Deliver [0.0s] expect like delays. You know, they’re preparing you like for the week, which is normal.

But, yeah, we just have to adjust and try to get stuck there. That’s the best thing. That’s basically what I do all day. I’m just focusing on logistics. That’s the most important area now in my business.

So I’m really putting everything aside that that’s my main focus. Good, good answer. So I know you talked about this before, like we talked about this before.We had a couple of discussions. You kind of gave me advice about like PPC automation tools.

What do you think about it? Do you guys use any automation tools?

Liran Hirschkorn [00:13:49] Yes. So here’s my like my take on. So we use PPC automation. We use a software tool called called Perpetua.

There’s others out there that are supposed to be good tools like Kenshoo and PacVue and some new ones I’ve heard of recently that I heard are good, but I don’t necessarily, I haven’t used them but there’s a lot of tools out there and I do like using automation but what I what I’ve learned in using PPC automation tools, that there is no perfect tool and every single tool, as far as I’ve seen or played with, has limitations in terms of how it works and in terms of what it wants to do.

I’ll give you an example. Right now, there’s a sponsored display remarketing on Amazon and the way you can set them up right now is you can set them up really as what I would consider a competitor targeting and retargeting.

But in Amazon, that’s how it’s called in the DSP world but in the Amazon Seller Central world, it’s under one campaign sponsored display, remarketing views is what it’s called.

And there’s you can target advertised product, which means retargeting people who saw your detail page and then it has similar to advertised products, which means retargeting people who saw other pages, which to me that’s not retargeting. Yes,it’s fairly new so.

Tomer David [00:15:13] Wow.

Liran Hirschkorn [00:15:13] So this is competitor targeting and you could put specific categories and subcategories that you want to target those specific categories of similar products.

Now to me, that’s competitor targeting. And really the way I want to set this up is I want to set this up as two separate campaigns, one campaign for retargeting my own product that’s likely to convert better and another campaign for competitor targeting.

The software that I use doesn’t have the ability to do that. It just it only has to do one sponsored display campaign for product. So this is something that I have my team managing manually.

We can’t rely on the software to separate this out. And so we’re managing it. We’re managing it manually. So every software has limitations, including bid optimization, something in the software that we see as if we run a keyword.

If it doesn’t get sales and get a bunch of clicks, the software lowers, it lowers the bid. But what if it’s a really important keyword for you, you know, and like maybe three, four months ago it was performing really well and just maybe now it’s not performing really well.

The software doesn’t have a mechanism to push it back up and retest it at some point right? So we need to watch those important keywords and say and within the software, we can go in and we can give it a bid push.

We can raise the bids on it sort of manually within the software. But if you just let it happen on its own, it won’t do it. So all these systems, all these software tools have aspects that and there’s a reason why people hire us as opposed to just putting software and saying goodbye.

Let me check it again in a month. You can’t you can’t do that today, maybe in a year or two years or three years, you know, maybe it’ll get there. But to me, the software and the sophisticated software tools are like a Boeing 747. You can put like they put it on the GPS right?

And your flight is on the GPS. But if you have a two millimeter shift on a flight from New York to L.A, you’ll end up in Europe right in the GPS direction and so you need a good pilot there that knows all the buttons and knows what to do and it’s kind of the same thing with the software tools.

Liran Hirschkorn [00:17:07] You need to know how to manipulate them, to get them to do what you want. But I like them because if you’re running, I mean us as an agency, right?

We’re running thousands of campaigns and so to manage each campaign manually, to manage each keyword manually, all the bids to me is not as efficient as you could be with software optimizing because even using bulk sheets or things like that, I think you could be more efficient utilizing software.

But you need to also go in, especially like you said now, like very regularly with budgets and things like that. And otherwise, in a regular time period, you need to go in two or three times a week to check what’s happening.

And then you probably need like every month to just dig in and spend more time going through bigger kind of search term reporting, finding..finding things and and making and making changes.

So I like software tools. I think if you have two, three, four products, you can manage things manually very very well.

But when you get into having 10 products, 15 products, you’re going to spend a lot of time and to me, it’s not worth the 80/20 of it is I’d rather spend more time on other things in my business and and help with the tools as far as like efficiency.

But if I had one product today, I don’t know that I would pay for a tool. I would just do everything manually. But at the time, the time is not worth it when you’re getting to more, more, more products.

Tomer David [00:18:35] Yeah, yeah. Well said, you explained very well. You mentioned something about the budgets. I know with Perpetua you.. They give you like the updates on the dashboard.

I think it takes like two to three days if I’m not wrong. So how you can actually see it like your out of budget in one of the campaigns like real time, especially these days, you just check it manually there on the Seller Central?

Liran Hirschkorn [00:18:58] Yeah. So so a couple of things. So one in in sponsored in sponsored brand campaigns, it shows you real time if campaigns are out of budget that day.

So you can’t. So it does show you that. On the sponsored product side, you can also set alerts that go out every day if you’ve been getting email alert. It goes out if you’ve been running out of budget.

But there’s also now something. There’s a recommendations engine that tells you like, hey, this campaign has been running out of budget and it’s also under your target ACOS, we recommend raising the budget from fifty to fifty eight dollars a day.

Tomer David [00:19:34] Is that real time? I don’t think it’s a real time recommendation.

Liran Hirschkorn [00:19:37] It works. It works based off your.. it works based off previous like the previous days.

But where we also see like we look at the past seven days, usually past seven days, past 30 days, and we see like a utilization meter in terms of like let’s say we have a fifty dollar campaign budget.

If it’s like the last seven days, it spent forty nine fifty. We know that it’s already going out of budget, so we’ll give it enough of a raise to hopefully not go out to budget each and every day.

So that’s generally good enough to say if we want to raise. So generally with our clients, we’ll either will have sort of some clients say to us, hey, as long as you’re under my target ACOS or target TACOS also we look at things on a blended.

If you’re under 20 percent ACOS, go crazy, right, right? Go spend however much you want. So in those cases we’ll just raise it.

In other cases, we’ll ask you if the person wants to wants to raise it and again, right now with inventory issues, we’re talking to clients as far as like, you know, do you want to raise the budget? You have enough inventory or not.

Tomer David [00:20:42] It’s a big deal right now. OK, that’s that’s that’s good to know. I know it’s not really related and off topic a little bit, but we talked about this before we started the call.

About like the competition in Amazon is becoming bigger and bigger and you see that now that sellers are more serious sellers, professional with funds behind them.

It’s like, you know, real companies like like not just before like..like individual people that just compete with each other.

You think as far as PPC, agents like, to me, like as an individual, it will be possible to compete with an agency like you?

I think that, you know, you’re using the tools you manage like thousands of campaigns.

But if I’m an individual that all day I’m sitting and tweaking and seeing what we spend yesterday, I have like more control that would give me, like, an advantage over a bigger companies or sellers, you think?

Liran Hirschkorn [00:21:40] Yeah. So so number one I mean, I have a lot of conversations with the big money that’s coming in and I can tell you that the big money that’s coming in doesn’t know Amazon the way you know Amazon right?

They are hiring agencies. They are hiring people that most of them come from a business background, a finance background, the private equity background.

You know, like they’re not necessarily coming in from..they’re coming maybe from a digital marketing background, but they’re not coming from a from a hey, I started an Amazon business with twenty thousand dollars and built it up to a seven figure business right?

So that’s the advantage you have today and at the end of the day, I think the I think there’s pros and cons right? So meaning meaning what’s the pros and cons?

The pros and cons is that, the disadvantage that a company like Thracio or any big company that has many, many brands and many, many products has against you is..

Tomer David [00:22:44] They move slow. Yeah.

Liran Hirschkorn [00:22:46] One, moving slow but also how do they get employee number two hundred and fifty one who is in charge of this product to care as much as you or it’s your livelihood, you know, and your business and your growth and your exit as much as that person who is, you know, an employee at a company, they have goals yes, but you’re going to care the most.

So to me, if I were to bet on one of these two people, I’m going to bet on the entrepreneur. Now, what they have behind them is they have the money.

They have the ability to go and spend the money on creative, on great video, on redoing packaging. So I think that the the opportunity in the next few years for the private label seller, the small seller right?

That’s starting with twenty five thousand dollars is to they really have to level up their game in terms of operational efficiency, in terms of creative, in terms of packaging, in terms of doing all these things and if you combine that with all the tactics and ranking and everything that we know how to do and you care a lot about and making great product and I think I think you have you know, I think you can compete.

And I think that the valuations for these businesses are only going to go up in the next. They’re already going up and they’re going to continue to go up because today you now have several companies that have raised, you know, 50 million, one hundred million dollars.

And they all have to go spend the money and buy, buy these and they’re all competing for the same sellers that are going with the brokers that are on Empire Flippers and all the brokers that are out there.

Tomer David [00:24:17] It’s recently, like I get a ton of emails like random emails, you want us to it like? Agencies rule like, you know. It’s a big market right now.

Liran Hirschkorn [00:24:27] Yes, exactly. So so to me, that says that the valuations will somewhat go up.

I also see that some of these companies are going to start to launch their own brands more than just then also just acquire, because at some point they’re going to figure out.

I can go spend a million dollars and buy or I can go, you know, put in two hundred thousand dollars and try to build myself and get to a million get to get to that valuation a year from now, you know, or more right?

So I think also, more of these companies are also going to start the launch their own brands and and also acquire.

Tomer David [00:25:00] Which they do. I think they..they’re a couple of brands that they have their own brands and they’re launching new products.

I think some of the companies, one of their strategies of buying businesses grow faster, like to just show the numbers. These are crazy. But yeah, I save more and more so and so.

Liran Hirschkorn [00:25:19]  And so the advantage they have is a scale advantage right? So the advantage I have is like, they go in and buy buy product and you are ordering one container from the supplier.

They’ve got a supply and they will order three containers right now. What can you give us a better price right?

And then they’re going to go drop the price on Amazon and they’ll drop it until they become the number one review if they’re not already right. And so that’s the that’s that’s going to become more of like more of the game.

You know, it’s going to get more aggressive, which means you have to level up product development right? You can’t just it’s getting harder and harder, just taken off the shelf China of product and, you know, make it super successful.

You need to differentiate, develop like make improvements. So I think product development is going to become more important and the creative side is going to become more important.

And in truth, the whole pie is getting bigger right? So like the whole e commerce pie is getting bigger every year or so. So more and more, Amazon is still relatively small percentage of all retail right?

There’s still a tremendous amount of buying that happens in stores, even though it seems like, you know, it’s shifting. The whole pie is getting bigger.

So there’s tremendous amount of opportunity, I think it’s still going to be an opportunity for people to, you know, build these businesses and sell them, sell them to these companies and get a better valuation like over the next six to 18 months as like a lot of this money needs to be spent.

But you’re going to have to be you know, you’re going to have to go from good to excellent, you know, two thousand and fourteen, you could just put a product up, you know, and it would sell and like you didn’t even have to run ads and today that’s not reality.

Tomer David [00:26:56] Yeah, yeah, I mean, it’s like you still have some niches and some product that you could still do it, but it’s becoming harder and harder to do that.

And yeah, you have to be like excellent at what you do. I see it like products that a year ago I would launch. I like to do bundles so I would launch with just a simple bundle would sell like crazy.

Now it doesn’t work. You see, also the other sellers are doing it, even the Chinese.

So yeah, you have to level up and always be on top of things but I look at it from a good point of view because that means that, you know, like 90 percent of the people will just not take the time to be excellent or they are lazy or whatever.

So, you know, I’m not really scared. You know, if you operate with the mindset of really be the best, you’ll make it on Amazon. And that’s what I try to really explain to people. You can’t just do it as a side thing, oh, let’s try Amazon or let’s do this.

Tomer David [00:27:50] You have to be all in committed and know you’re going to be the best you know, you can’t just..

Liran Hirschkorn [00:27:55] And and know that if you’re starting out that you’re going to fail and that you only really learn, learn from your failures.

I’ve had many failed products and many very successful products and like I learned a lot of lessons, unfortunately, the hard way sometimes, but I learn a lot of lessons along the way.

And that’s part of, you know, that’s part of the process of, you know, of learning and like, to me, it’s really important in this space to surround yourself with other, you know, really smart people and mastermind with other people and learn from other people.

Tomer David [00:28:29] You’re the master at this. I think you are the guy that knows, like the most Amazon sellers or people and, you know.

I think I asked you in Vegas about this. Like, what is your secret, how you network with so many people? And you just I think, you naturally, you like to give back.

You  like to give value to people, you’re always helping and people appreciate this, you know, and they want to give you back and connect with you. So that’s that’s really amazing.

Liran Hirschkorn [00:28:58] Yeah, I think I think I mean, I would say like people you know about like how do I learn Amazon?

And really it’s like networking and going to events and paying for events and paying for groups and and and yeah. So like just talking to, I mean answering every single message, talking to people, learning from other people.

I definitely didn’t invent anything that I like, I think I have a common sense mind, you know, and like, you know, good strategic thinker but I didn’t invent any strategy or tactic or, you know, it’s all sharing and talking to other people and, you know, and learning learning from other people that have already done it, done it before you you know, Tony Robbins says like success leave success leaves clues right?

Like, you don’t really need to reinvent the wheel on Amazon. It’s a lot of it’s very formulaic and data-driven and so if you start to understand, you know, how it works, then you know, you can it’s much easier to know what it takes to do really, really, really well and like you said.

I think today you have to implement a lot more good strategies in order to.. in order to be successful but the best way for you to learn is to participate and ask questions and be active and I think like Facebook communities and, you know, other places and pay to go to events or mastermind’s or and learn from other people.

Tomer David [00:30:24] Yeah, definitely. For me, when I started to really surround myself with, like, you know, like what doesn’t matter, even the smallest seller, but with sellers all day, I just, you know, the learning curve is just much faster.

You know, that’s someone that did it and it can give you like ah, like the small advice that could be worth like a lot of money instead of you failing.

So what I like to do is to, you know, every chance that they have, like the extra time, like, with the headset, even if I’m washing dishes and I’m just listening to things, YouTube, videos, podcasts, and even the smallest thing.

If you are even if you are not hundred percent concentrated, take everything you could take one little thing or one mistake that one person did learn from me and you know, it will take you much faster to where you want to be.

Liran Hirschkorn [00:31:12] Yes.

Tomer David [00:31:13] I don’t know. I like how much more time you have. But I do have another question about like like sending outside traffic to Amazon.

I know it’s a big thing, especially when it’s becoming, you know, PPC is becoming a lot more of the bids, more and more expensive.

The competition there is fierce and people are starting to look, you know, on outside sources for traffic to their listing on Amazon, especially now with Amazon attribution that is, you know, there are really accelerating, the development of it, like how it works for you guys, like any.

Liran Hirschkorn [00:31:46] Yeah.

Tomer David [00:31:46] So platforms or?

Liran Hirschkorn [00:31:48] So one, the first thing is Amazon attribution is still a little clunky, like I’m sure it doesn’t work from mobile.

It works for desktop, like there are certain things that don’t work exactly as they should be with Amazon attribution, so I would say, you know, your best conversions are going to come probably some traffic that’s within Amazon.

But I do think that the things that I’m looking at to implement more in twenty twenty one is working with influencers, especially influencers that are doing Amazon live.

I think Amazon live is going to get bigger and you already see Amazon putting more attention on Amazon live and I think that’s an area that I think two things within Amazon they should be focused on next year, building out your storefronts.

You see store storefront like you’ve seen on certain pages and big banners, featuring pages from somebody’s storefront. So Amazon is going to drive more traffic to your storefront and I think Amazon live is a big thing.

So one of the initiatives that I’ve kind of given to my team to work on is finding these influencers there and there are some tools out there and sites where you can find Amazon influencers and getting them to do like Amazon live.

And one of the sorts of algorithmic things that happens with Amazon live is that when you get a lot of people who are watching from the beginning, it starts to like, the way to get it to the top right? Like when you go to Amazon.com slash live, there’s like one thing that that’s big at the top right?

And the way that it gets there, is that it’s something that a lot of people were watching from the beginning and so it kind of shoots upright? So it’s it’s an algorithm and so the way it happens is these influencers are sending to the audience.

Tomorrow at two o’clock, I’m going live joined here right? And like, they build that audience beforehand. And so one of the things I really want to work on in twenty twenty-one is leveraging Amazon live, is using influencers to do that one.

It’s also, you don’t have to then do the videos on your own or whatever right? Like you’re paying, you’re sending the influencer your product and they’re doing the Amazon live.

And then I do think that you know, Google traffic to Amazon is going to become more prominent and more important because, you know, what’s going to happen is I think, you know, how are these companies like a Thracio right?

That has a goal of taking a product that’s selling. They’re already doing really well with it right?

It’s doing one hundred thousand dollars a month on Amazon but like they’re at the top, it’s the number one reviews, like they’re at the top. Where and how do you create more demand?

There’s only a certain amount of search, volume and product. You have to bring that demand from outside of Amazon and generate that demand outside in order. So, like sometimes you see, I was just looking at a product the other day.

Tomer David [00:34:30] You think they’re going to put it to their Amazon listings, not to their Shopify stores? Because on Amazon, they’re going to charge them all these fees. But at the other end you have better conversions of course.

Liran Hirschkorn [00:34:40] Gets better conversions. I mean, they’re probably working on both, but I think sending outside traffic and also the ranking benefits and and just the conversions that you have, yes.

So and actually they’re already doing it. But, you know, I was looking the other day at a..at a product.. one of my customers sells acrylic nail powder kit or whatever to make acrylic nails.

And there’s this one brand. I forgot the name of it. But if you look at like acrylic nail, it’s one brand, they dominate. They’re getting like a crazy amount of sales.

And then I look through, I look through the keywords and like their brand name and Helium is showing over one hundred thousand branded searches a month and they’re dominating right?

And so then I went and said, OK, they must have outside traffic. I go and I look at their Instagram and there’s one hundred sixty thousand followers on their Instagram.

So they’re generating that demand into..into Amazon from outside and you might see certain products on Amazon doing so well and everybody else maybe not.

Or like another you know, another thing we look at is in the in the bar space kind kind, we have..we have a client that sells breakfast bars. I posted an image, right, of the product.

We’re looking at some of the competition and Kind bars, like 90 percent of their sales on Amazon is generated from branded searches right? Not through searches.

So, like, sure, I can look at a competitor’s and say, hey, this is a crazy market kind of selling two million a month like my goals. You know, my goal is that how come I’m only selling ten thousand?

Well, that’s because they have tons of, like, branded traffic that’s coming in and so building that outside, you know, makes a lot of sense and then people are going to go to Amazon to search to search for your brand.

Some of the stuff we’re doing for one brand right now is Amazon OTT. An OTT is called Over-The-Top, and that is video ads that show up on fire TV.

So right, again, that’s generating demand so you can actually run a video ad on Amazon fire TV and show it to a specific audience as an audience of people that are interested in a specific segment on Amazon right? So let’s say I have you know..

[00:36:44] Invite only you know? It’s not open to everyone right?

Liran Hirschkorn [00:36:47] It’s open through DSP. It has like, I think at least a three month commitment. Ten thousand a month commitment and but it’s a long term game, it’s like Nike running a TV ad, right?

It’s not going to get people to go buy Nike sneakers tomorrow but what it’s going to lead to is more branded searches for the brand and this is really building a brand but you need budgets and the ability to go..to go do that.

But I think a good starting point is using influencers, Amazon live, Google traffic to Amazon.

But I think first, like, maximize what you’re doing on Amazon because your best sales and conversions are going to come from organic and paid within Amazon and based on searches and then once you’ve got a product to a certain point, I think it’s worth investing in and doing more from the outside.

Tomer David [00:37:38] Yeah, 100 percent agree. Like, if you didn’t max out or you are not dominating the category, it’s going to be like a waste of time because the money and let’s say we are going to compare ACOS like, it’s going to be much higher so..

Liran Hirschkorn [00:37:51] Yes, yes.

Tomer David [00:37:54] Definitely only if you’re a dominating a niche and I also tried it and I left it because there is just you know, it’s not the 20/80 it just spend too much time on.

You have to figure out things and you have too many platform. It just doesn’t make sense if you are not like, big enough. I think so. Yeah, I agree.

Tomer David [00:38:12] Last question Liran, what is your take, how you guys launch new products? Like every product that I launch, because I look at it from like a long term game.

I like to do everything very compatible with the TOS so I launch with like zero reviews and PPC only and you know, sometimes it works well just from the beginning.

Sometimes it takes a little more time to kick in as far as like Amazon agreement to give you some clicks and traction and some like I have a product for two months, it’s still on zero reviews, which is weird and it’s getting sales and, you know, that’s my strategy but I’m curious to hear, like, what you guys are doing.

Liran Hirschkorn [00:38:53] Yeah. So I’ve so OK. So number one, if you have brand registry, you should be doing the Vine program and you should be doing the earlier review program unless you really think, you know, you’re not going to get good reviews.

But if you’re not going to get good reviews from Vine, you have to have a generally bigger problem probably. Yeah. Vine program and early review program to get some initial reviews. It takes a little bit of time. It’ll take two to three weeks.

In the meantime, we launch with PPC and we’ve had we’ve had products that have had success just with just with PPC and getting ranking and just doing PPC alone.

We took a product from zero to two million dollars in sales over three or four months. It was a summer product like that we launched in May. Was the right product, right time.

Everything happened well. High priced product like hundred dollars and twenty five percent ACOS from the beginning and ranking for keywords with fifty thousand plus searches just from PPC.

Tomer David [00:39:45] When you see it in the like, two or three days, you know, you have like a winner.

[00:39:49] Yes. Yeah exactly. And that’s the thing too with Amazon like, if if your product is an uphill battle from the beginning, it’s probably a loser like, you know, cut it, cut it off. Don’t wait six months.

Wait if after two months you don’t have traction, you don’t have you have a loser, generally.

Tomer David [00:40:05] It’s hard sometimes. But I had this situation. I had two products like that, it just doesn’t go anywhere. The removal order, the time and money spent on this, doesn’t work.

Liran Hirschkorn [00:40:14] Yes. So that’s number one. So we launch with that, we launch with PPC and then we will do like giveaway strategy behind it and we’ll build out like a three month plan for give-away right?

So what we’ll do is we’ll build out the first month. We might do five to ten units a day over thirty days just to get sales and just to get some of those people who will leave reviews right?

We have the automated request review, but we’re not specifically making them leave a review or, you know, we have the automated request review and we’re going to get some some reviews from that.

Meanwhile, reviews are going to come from the Vine program, and we’re doing like LongTail keywords that we’re going to phase two and say, OK, we’re going to get to having thirty, forty reviews. Now we’re going to go after this second subset of longtail keywords.

We can do another 30-day launch. And then like the plan we have now with the product is we want to go after we’re going to wait till we get one hundred reviews because it’s more competitive until we go for more aggressive keyword and we kind of build-out like the three-month game plan of building up the reviews, building up the sales, utilizing PPC until we can say, OK.

Now we can go after those like keywords that are going to require no one more giveaways and keywords that are going to require you to have more views in order for you to be able to kind of like stick and land so, you know.

I would also say that new products are much easier to rank with PPC and older products that have been sitting are much harder to rank with PPC.

They are also much harder to rank with giveaways, especially if it’s been sitting for like a year, you know, a year..but sometimes the difference the product makes if you’re.

So I had a seller recently, actually a guy on my team, he was working on somebody else’s product and it was like a thermometer, right? Like a forehead thermometer and he had a product on the bottom of page one and it was selling like ten thousand a month.

And then he made a big push, the major giveaways, and got his product to like, I don’t know, the top five or the top 10 and he went from ten thousand one to eighty thousand a month right?

So like just that one keyword right? A major keyword. Getting it from the bottom to the top can make a huge difference but you need the reviews first, to be able to stick on such a competitive keyword.

So I would say new products, try PPC first run that for aggressive for fourteen, twenty-one day’s, top of search, exact match targeting, ASIN targeting, aggressive like we used nine hundred percent you know, product page target ASINs you think you can you know to compete against.

Start with a more aggressive price point. Do the Vine program early review program. You know, and that’s generally how I would say. And then if, if you need a bigger push behind that then do then add in giveaways.

Tomer David [00:42:49] This is this is really good strategy. But I assume the strategy for the normal times, because now you have the two hundred units limit. So how you can’t you can even do.

That’s why I don’t do Vine. I don’t do it because it’s 30 units so already I’m going to be a hundred and seventy units. They don’t allow me to send it.

Liran Hirschkorn [00:43:09] Yes. So which is why I also like phasing it out over like three months right?

In the beginning, we’re going to do five to ten units a day so that the limits will start to open up for you to be able to spend more and more and by the time we need to do six hundred units in a month, your limits have opened up.

So but yeah, it is harder, we were in the middle of a giveaway now. We had units on their way in and not getting checked in and we had to pause the give away until more units get checked in. So yeah, this is for everybody right now. So.

Tomer David [00:43:40] Very, very happy to have you here, really, I learned a lot, I’m sure, like many people that will watch, it will also learn, like many, many things about PPC, about like branding, about what the future holds.

So I really appreciate you spending this time especially, I know that you’re super busy these times. You have to manage all these products, the campaigns and all of that. So, again, I appreciate it.

Liran Hirschkorn [00:44:05] Yes, thank you and and what I’m going to put this, I think, on my podcast, too, so maybe give your channel a shout out so people know where to go follow.

Tomer David [00:44:13] Yeah, sure. Thank you. So there is a YouTube channel called Sourcing Monster. You can type it on YouTube.

And for our audience on YouTube, please check their group on Facebook for Amazon FBA sellers mainly, it’s not just limited to Amazon sellers.

You have like all about e-commerce, really great group with people like serious people. If you’re already on Facebook groups, you’ll notice that there are some groups that it’s mainly spam and there are more serious groups.

This is one of the groups that I go to and spend time there, learn new things, ask questions. So definitely I’ll put the link down below in the video so you can join the group.

Liran Hirschkorn [00:44:52] Great. Thank you so much for having me on.

Tomer David [00:44:54] Of course. Thank you!

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